Table of Contents

An ancient maxim tells us that the proper study of man is
man. The problem of man is an eternal and at the same time the
most urgent of all problems. It lies at the heart of the
philosophical questions of man's place and destination in a
world that is being discovered and transformed in the name of
humanity, the highest of all values. The main goal of social
development is the formation of human abilities and the
creation of the most favourable conditions for human
self-expression.

Physicists are perfectly right in stressing the difficulties
of research into elementary particles. But they should not
resent being told that such research is child's play in
comparison with the scientific comprehension of games played
by children! The rules of any game are only a conventionally
marked path; children "run" along this path very
capriciously, violating its borders at every turn, because
they possess free will and their choice cannot be
predicted. Nothing in the world is more complex or more
perplexing than a human being.

Many sciences study people, but each of them does so from its
own particular angle. Philosophy, which studies humanity in
the round, relies on the achievements of other sciences and
seeks the essential knowledge that unites humankind.

Idealism reduces the human essence to the spiritual
principle. According to Hegel, the individual realises not
subjective, but objective aims; he is a part of the unity not
only of the human race but of the whole universe because the
essence of both the universe and man is the spirit.

The essence of man comprises both the spiritual sphere, the
sphere of the mind, and his bodily organisation, but it is not
confined to this. Man becomes aware of himself as a part of
the social whole. Not for nothing do we say that a person is
alive as long as he is living for others. Human beings act in
the forms determined by the whole preceding development of
history. The forms of human activity are objectively embodied
in all material culture, in the implements of labour, in
language, concepts, in systems of social norms. A human being
is a biosocial being and represents the highest level of
development of all living organisms on earth, the subject of
labour, of the social forms of life, communication and
consciousness.

If we examine human existence at the organismic level, we
discover the operation of laws based on the self-regulation of
processes in the organism as a stable integral system. As we
move "upwards", we encounter the world of the mind, of
personality. At the organismic level, the human being is part
of the natural interconnection of phenomena and obeys its
necessity, but at the personal level his orientation is
social. From the world of biology through psychology we enter
the sphere of social history.

In ancient philosophy man was thought of as a "small
world" in the general composition of the universe, as a
reflection and symbol of the universe understood as a
spiritualised organism. A human being, it was thought,
possessed in himself all the basic elements of the
universe. In the theory of the transmigration of souls evolved
by Indian philosophers the borderline between living creatures
(plants, animals, man and gods) is mobile. Man tries to break
out of the fetters of empirical existence with its law of
karma, or what we should call "fate". According to the
Vedanta, the specific principle of the human being is the
atman (soul, spirit, selfhood), which in
essentials may be identified with the universal spiritual
principle—the Brahman. The ancient Greeks, Aristotle,
for example, understood man as a social being endowed with a
"reasoning soul".

In Christianity the biblical notion of man as the "image
and likeness of
God", internally divided owing to the Fall, is
combined with the theory of the unity of the divine and human
natures in the personality of Christ and the consequent
possibility of every individual's inner attainment of divine
"grace".

The Age of the Renaissance is totally inspired by the idea of
human autonomy, of man's boundless creative
abilities. Descartes worked on the principle,
cogito, ergo sum—"I think
therefore I am". Reason was regarded as the specific feature
of man. Soul and body were understood dualistically. The body
being regarded as a machine, similar to that of the animals,
while the soul was identified with consciousness.

Proceeding from this dualistic understanding of man as a being
belonging to two different worlds, the world of natural
necessity and that of moral freedom, Kant divided anthropology
into "physiological" and "pragmatic" aspects. The
first should study what nature makes of man, while the second
is
concerned with what he, as a freely acting being, does, can or
should make of himself. Here there is a return to the
conception of man as a living whole which characterised the
Renaissance. Unlike that of the animals, man's bodily
organisation and sense organs are less specialised, and this
is an advantage. He has to form himself, by creating a
culture. Thus we arrive at the idea of the historical nature
of human existence. For classical German philosophy the
determining factor is the notion of man as a spiritually
active being creating a world of culture, as a vehicle of
reason. In criticising these ideas Feuerbach achieved an
anthropological reorientation of philosophy centering it on
man, understood primarily as a spiritually corporeal being, as
a vital interlock ing of the "I" and the "you

According to Nietzsche,
man
is determined by the play of vital
forces and attractions and not by the reason. Kierkegaard
gives priority to the act of will, in which the individual, by
making a choice, "gives birth to
himself", ceases to be
merely a "child of nature" and becomes a conscious
personality, that is to say, a spiritual being, a being that
determines itself. In personalism and existentialism the
problem of personality is central. A human being cannot be
reduced to any essence (biological, psychological, social or
spiritual). Existentialism and personalism contrast the
concept of individuality (being a part of the natural and
social whole) to that of personality, as unique spiritual
self-determination, as "existence".

The point of departure of the Marxist understanding of man is
the human being as the product and subject of labour
activity. ". . .The essence of
man
is no abstraction
inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the
ensemble of the social
relations."[1]